Chinese Hackers May Have Pinched US Military Designs
Perhaps the Chinese government turned loose its hacker squad to poach
sensitive U.S. military documents, giving President Obama a new set of
grievances to lodge in his upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi
Jinping. However, that simplistic explanation may be just plain wrong.
"For almost anything that happens, we point at China as the culprit,"
noted security expert Ken Silva.
Chinese hackers were accused of stealing the
designs for more than two dozen U.S. military weapons systems in a
report appearing Monday in
The Washington Post.
The system designs pinched by the hackers were for systems critical
to the country's missile defenses and its combat aircraft and war ships,
the paper said.
The revelations were based on confidential sections of a report
prepared by the Defense Science Board, a Pentagon advisory group for
military brass and Defense Department higher-ups.
China was not linked to the design thefts by the authors of the board's report, the Post
acknowledged, but it cited senior military and industry officials with
knowledge of the breaches as confirming that a majority of the break-ins
were part of a widening Chinese campaign of spying on U.S. defense
contractors and government agencies.
As news of the U.S. weapon systems hacks was emerging, reports
surfaced from Australia accusing Chinese hackers of filching the plans
for the headquarters of its top spy agency, the Australian Security
Intelligence Organization.
Aussie Attack
While news broke of the cyberintrusions in the United States, Australia
discovered that it, too, had been targeted by Chinese hackers.
The blueprints for Australia's top intelligence agency reportedly
were stolen by Chinese hackers years ago from a contractor working on
the US$630 million building, which is in its completion phase.
Until the reported attack this week, some analysts had suggested that
Australia was an unlikely target for cyberespionage activities.
"That's ridiculous," Richard Stiennon, chief research analyst at
IT-Harvest, told TechNewsWorld.
"Australia's economy is tied very closely to China's," he pointed
out, "and there have been oil, gas and mining breaches since 2009."
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